


Propane Nightmares

by Trash



Category: Linkin Park
Genre: Gay Bashing, Gore, Horro, M/M, Murder, Rape, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-22
Updated: 2014-01-22
Packaged: 2018-01-09 16:04:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1147942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trash/pseuds/Trash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe his first murder victim was really his own conscience</p>
            </blockquote>





	Propane Nightmares

It started as a bet. Something stupid over a sticky bar table. He picked up his glass, the beer mat stuck to the bottom, and glanced over at the brick shithouse behind the bar. This guy, he probably weighs five hundred pounds, his steps heavy and plodding. Probably, he has a fat as fuck family waiting for him at home, a wife he molests and kids he beats.

And Chester says, “He called me a faggot.”

“You are a faggot.” Brad tells him and stamps his foot down on the floor, hard. Something crunches under his boot. A roach, or worse. Nothing would surprise Chester now.

“So? As if that makes it okay to call someone a nigger, even if they are one. You fucking Jew.”

This is relaxing after a long day of selling coke and heroin to pimps and whores on the strip. The really strung out ones are easy enough to rip off – take a quarter of the coke they want and replace it with flour. That way you still end up with the same amount of money and you have yourself a couple of lines.

Brad examines his nails and shrugs. “So he called you a faggot? Not as if you haven’t been called worse. What you going to do about it?”

“I’m gonna fucking kill him.”

“Your weedy little ass?” Brad laughs and empties his beer. “As if you could get near him. I bet you fifty bucks you couldn’t even hit him in the mouth.”

“One hundred bucks.” Chester says and reaches a hand across the dirty table to shake.

Brad stares at him dubiously but nods, shakes, says, “Sure. One hundred.”

The bar closed and they were kicked out on their asses. Brad is drunk on cheap, piss weak beer and shoves Chester up against the wall, kissing him roughly. For a second Chester lets him, stands submissively and lets Brad bite his lip but then he pushes him away.

“I’ll meet you at home.”

“Why? Where you going?”

“To earn a hundred bucks.” Chester says, kissing Brad goodbye and stalking down an alley to the back of the building.

The fat bar tender waddles out eventually, carrying two stinking black bags in each hand, a trail of something leaking out of one of them. Chester watches from the shadows as he slings one into the dumpster. He scratches his ass with his free hand then slings in the other bag.

He scratches his ass again and tugs at his underwear under his jeans and then Chester hits him with a bit of rusty pipe over the head. He doesn’t go down straight away. His hands as big as catcher’s mitts come up to the back of his head as he spins around and Chester smacks the pipe straight into his fat face, sending his teeth flying into his mouth and out through the air. Blood, spit and teeth everywhere.

The guy reels in pain and tries to say something, spraying blood all over Chester who swings the pipe again, hitting him in the face over and over until he falls. His hitting the ground is similar to that whole ‘if a tree falls in the forest’ thing. There’s nobody around to hear the smack of his body hit the wet tarmac. Nobody to watch Chester cave his head in.

Or to see this guy get robbed.

Chester isn’t retarded. Leaving the murder weapon is like leaving your name. So he walks five blocks to the apartment he shares with Brad, covered in the fat guy’s blood and spit, the pipe dragging along the pavement with every step. The fact that he passes people on the street and they don’t look twice just says something about the neighbourhood.

He dumps the pipe on the kitchen table on top of yesterday’s newspaper and heads down the hallway to the bathroom. The blood washes off his hands and face easily, but when he crawls into bed Brad says, “You smell like…” and takes a deep breath, pressing his nose to Chester’s hair, “like I owe you a hundred bucks.”

Chester pushes him back and kisses him hard, his hands buried deep in Brad’s hair.

***

After the bet it became a habit. A guilty pleasure. Brad hired a runner to do the drops he hated most and that little cock sucker stole more than two hundred thousand dollars from them over the year. Brad, he wants to do it civilised – get the money back and put a bullet in the back of the fuck head’s skull. Chester kisses his cheek and says, “I’ll deal with it. Don’t worry.”

The kid’s name is Rob and he lives in a basement apartment below a brothel. Chester pounds on his door until he opens up and shoves him back inside.

“What the fuck?” Rob scowls and steps forward so he is toe-to-toe with Chester, looking down on him and glaring. “What’s your fucking problem?”

Chester smiles calmly and pulls out his flick knife, bringing it up to Rob’s throat. “You’re gonna give me my money back or I’ll bleed you dry, you understand me?”

Rob pales and backs up. “I don’t have any money.”

“Yeah you do you tweaker piece of shit, I know you’ve been stealing from us and you’re gonna give it back.”

“I don’t fucking have any money.” Rob repeats, slower. “Get fucked.”

Chester steps forward again and stabs Rob in the arm with the knife, the blade disappearing into his skin easily. Rob howls in pain and tries to pull away but Chester twists the knife.

“Okay.” He says. “I’ll ask your rat landlord what you did with it. Don’t think he isn’t keeping an eye on you. And until then I’ll keep my promise.”

Through gritted teeth Rob pants, “What promise?”

Chester doesn’t say anything. He pushes Rob out of the room and into the bedroom, presses the knife to his throat and says, “Lay down.”

Rob does as he is told and stretches out on the bed, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he takes tiny little panicked breaths. “Hey. Man. I don’t…I really don’t have your money now.”

“Well then I’m going to teach you a lesson about stealing.” Chester says, rummaging through Rob’s drawers. Eventually he finds a pair of police issue handcuffs and he holds them up with a smirk. “Kinky.” He grabs Rob’s wrists and cuffs him to the headboard and gets to work unfastening his pants.

“Hey!” Rob protests, squirming and trying to kick Chester in the face. “Hey get the fuck off me you dirty fucking faggot.”

Chester punches him hard enough to knock him out.

Then he rapes him with the blade of his flick knife.

On his way out of the apartment he passes some kid on the stoop. Probably Rob’s age. Young enough. He almost walks straight into Chester and when he does he sees the blood on his hands, on his shirt, and he looks up.

“Is Rob in there?” He asks, his voice weak.

“Rob is otherwise occupied.” Chester says with a smile, but he can see the kid fingering his cell phone in his pocket. Probably he’s already got a nine and a one keyed in.

Probably he’s already memorised Chester’s description to give to the cops, to turn him in.

And that just isn’t going to happen.

He socks the kid in the face, right between the eyes, and catches him before his body crumples to the ground. He fishes his own cell phone out and calls Brad, says “I need you to come pick me up.” He says, “It’s an emergency.”

***

Brad helps him carry Mike into their spare bedroom, the one that stinks from when one of their friends got drunk and pissed the bed. They lay him down and Chester disappears out of the room, returning with a roll of electrical tape in his hands.

“Woah what the fuck?” Brad grabs Chester’s hands and takes the tape from him. “What are you doing? Who is this kid?”

“You know how we said we’d never ask each other questions?”

Brad nods. “Yeah I know. I just, I thought he was passed out drunk or something. Not…kidnapped.”

“He’s not a kid. It’s not kidnapping. It’s just…it’s a game.”

“Fine.” Brad says, handing the tape back over. He looks between the guy on the bed and Chester. “I won’t ask anymore questions. But if we go to prison for this I hope you get corn holed by some fat murderer in your cell.”

And that’s it. He slams the door and he’s gone. And the kid is just coming to.

Chester binds his wrists and ankles with tape and slaps some over his mouth too. As he blinks open his swollen eyes he focuses on Chester and visibly tenses.

“I’ll take the tape off if you promise to be quiet. Nobody can hear you but me anyway, I’d just rather not have to listen to you.”

The guy nods, reluctantly, and Chester tears the tape off so fast a layer of skin off the guy’s lips goes with it and he lays there licking away his own blood.

“What’s your name?”

“What…why am I here? I don’t have money, you know?”

“Oh I know that. Rob has all the money I could possibly need right now, I just have to find it.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“What’s your name?”

“Mike.”

“Mike.” Chester nods. “Okay, Mike. Rob isn’t around anymore, okay? He has been disposed of. And I can’t have you ratting me out to the cops over this. That’s why you’re here.”

“You’re going to kill me.”

Chester shrugs. “Yeah well, maybe. But not yet. Is there anybody who will be looking for you?”

Mike shakes his head.

Chester smiles. “Right.” He says. “Good.”

He picks up the knife again, and walks out of the room, locking the door after him.

***

Brad sits at the kitchen table reading a book, huffily. He doesn’t look up when Chester walks into the room, just keeps his eyes on the page in front of him. “Quoth the raven,” he says “Nevermore.”

“Shut up.” Chester says and dumps the knife on the table.

“Who is he?”

“Mike. One of Rob’s tweaker friends, I think.”

Brad looks up, incredulous. “You think?”

Chester shrugs and grabs a beer from the fridge. “He saw me coming out of that dick sprout’s apartment and started asking questions. He was gonna call the cops, Brad, and I just am not going to prison today.”

“Why couldn’t you have just killed him there and then? Why drag his ass back here for the cops to find?” Brad asks. He goes back to reading his book and back to ignoring Chester long enough for Chester to think the conversation is over but then Brad says, “People used to think this shit was scary. Edgar Allen Poe, his stuff, it was horror. But what was scary then isn’t now. Now what’s scary is getting stuck by a drug dealer. Or by you.”

“I’m not scary.”

Brad shrugs, raises an eyebrow. “I’d say you were. You scare me, not to mention our hostage. Jesus, Chester, don’t you have a conscience?”

“Fuck you.” Chester snaps. “I do.”

Only…he doesn’t. Not anymore. Maybe his first victim wasn’t that shit head in the bar. Maybe his own conscience was his first victim.

***

The idea drives him crazy.

He used to be a good person.

He and Brad were going to make a life together. They were going to be happy. But all he’s done is fuck things up for Brad. The drugs thing was all Chester’s idea, and because of it Brad had to drop out of college.

So in the middle of the night he leads Mike, gagged and blindfolded out to the car, and drives into the darkness.

***

Mike is silent in the car. Chester hates it, is used to Brad’s constant rambling. The silence makes him nervous and eventually he says, “Do you think I have a conscience?”

Mike blinks, once, twice, slowly. Then he swallows and says, “Well. Yeah I suppose. I mean…I don’t know you. But you haven’t killed me yet, so, I guess you do.”

“Okay.” Chester says. “Okay.”

He pulls the car off the road and into a truck stop. He kills the engine and the silence sinks around them deeper. He grabs the keys and gets out, goes round to the passenger door and opens it. “Get out.”

Mike does as he is told and follows Chester across the garage forecourt to the store. The clerk eyes them warily so Chester flashes him a cold smile. “We need the bathroom key.” He says.

The guy probably figures that he and Mike are going to lock themselves in a stall and fuck. But he still hands the key over, the block it is attached to heavy and half rotten from thousand of men’s hands.

Chester drags Mike outside and toward the bathrooms which he unlocks and locks again when they slip inside. There are three lights on the walls, two of which are broken, and Mike goes to immediately stand under the one which is working. The shadow the light casts against the wall his twice his size, but trembling all the same.

He pulls a little packet of cocaine out of his pocket and makes a messy line on the dirty sink. He snorts it in once fast sniff and tips his head back, holding his breath. “God I love coke,” he says as he exhales. “That’s what I’m gonna buy with the money Rob owes us. A fuck load of cocaine.”

Mike doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look up from where he is staring at his feet.

Chester stalks toward him until they’re breathing each other’s breath. Mike shivers and looks up. His eyes are black with fear, Chester’s black with lust. He leans in and presses his lips to Mike’s desperately but Mike just…he just won’t play along. He doesn’t understand the game.

He pulls back and grabs a handful of Mike’s hair and throws him into the radiator fixed to the tile wall, his skull hitting it with a dull thud. He slides down the wall to the ground and cradles his head in his hands, blood seeping through his fingers.

“Get up.” Chester says.

Mike tries. More than once. And when he is eventually standing he throws up all over his and Chester’s shoes. Nothing but bile, since he hasn’t been fed today.

“You’re fucking disgusting.” Chester spits and grab’s Mike’s hair again smashing his head into the metal radiator over and over and over until there’s so much blood he loses his grip.

Mike’s body slides to the floor. He’s barely still conscious. And when Chester looks at him he sees himself. He sees his only bloody face with half his skull caved in and his nose broken. He sees the way he deserves to be, he deserves to be beaten to a pulp.

The murders, they aren’t the worst. Trapping Brad is the worst thing he has ever done. There are worse things you can do to someone than kill them. Like dragging them down with you.

He sends a sharp kick to Mike’s stomach, his steel capped army boot cracking a rib. The sound is music to his ears so he does it again. Again and again and again. And then he brings his foot down hard on Mike’s head, just for good measure.

And then there’s the silence again.

And suddenly he feels sick.

There’s blood everywhere and as he makes his way to the sink to wash his hands he slips in it, falls to his hands and knees. His wrist gives way and he cries out in pain. Struggles to his feet, gripping the basin with his good hand to tug himself up. The water that blasts from the fawcett is dirty with rust and who the fuck knows what.

As he watches the blood wash away he thinks of Macbeth, that stupid play Brad made him read. “Forgive me my foul murder.” He says aloud, even though he isn’t sure if it’s the right thing to say. Even if there’s nobody to hear it.

What hits him hardest is that he doesn’t care. He waits for the guilt but it never comes. And he wonders if Brad was right – he really has no conscience.

He’s alone inside his body.

There’s no right or wrong. There’s only the decisions we make.

So he locks up the bathroom, with Mike still inside. Alive and dying or dead and cooling, it’s hard to tell for all the blood.

He leaves the key in the lock and goes back to the car.

And he drives home.


End file.
